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East Asian countries have recently upgraded their regional cooperation for clean air through the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia, with elaborate arrangements for monitoring and capacity-building assistance for multiple pollutants. This represents a departure from the earlier informal regimes with vague arrangements on acid deposition. However, despite this notable shift, this formalization in the regional governance for clean air remains largely unexplored in the existing literature. This study fills this gap by analysing the dynamics of formalization through aid from theories of regime complexity and legalization. It focuses on the decade from 2012 to 2021, employing documentary analysis and interviews. The results reveal that governments actively pursue their state interests by adjusting institutional arrangements through regime competition and selection that drive formalization. Sharing cognition of the hazardousness of multiple pollutants achieved through interactions between regional and global institutions serves as a catalyst for reaching an agreement on the arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, East Asia has gone from having virtually no regional financial cooperation to having multiple cooperative arrangements. This article focuses on the issue area of emergency liquidity provision, where global (International Monetary Fund), regional (Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization), and bilateral arrangements co-exist and overlap in complicated ways, forming a regime complex. While the overall system offers more options and greater funding than were available in 1997, it also raises questions about how those levels will operate in a crisis. This article shows how national preferences of likely creditor and likely borrower countries have interacted to create the current regime complex, as well as the political compromises and remaining uncertainties about how they will work together. It argues that the evolution and current shape of the regime complex have been driven by the efforts of key states to take advantage of or thwart power asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the inward–out influence from Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) to extra-regionally based actors, here defined as non-ASEAN stakeholders, in regional cooperation on climate change. The case study on the ASEAN Multi-Sectoral Framework on Climate Change (AFCC) indicates that non-ASEAN stakeholders underwent 'ASEANization' when adapting their rhetoric and practices in line with regional normative contexts and interests. In the forestry sector of AFCC where power asymmetry favored non-ASEAN actors, a relatively low level of ASEANization occurred as non-ASEAN stakeholders glossed over complex issues and constructed coherence between local and outside agendas. In the agricultural sector where power asymmetry was not as prevalent, a higher level of ASEANization unfolded where non-ASEAN stakeholders became more flexible on mitigation agendas, given strong regional resistance to go beyond adaptation. Moreover, inward–out influence existed in both sectors as long-term socialization led to coordination and adjustments of expectations and practices concerning cooperation efforts on both sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, East Asia's efforts to enhance regional financial cooperation raised the possibility of East Asia playing a more assertive role in global financial governance. However, despite the region's increased voice in governance and economic weight, East Asian financial systems and markets have mostly adapted to global norms developed in New York, London, and Washington, DC. We argue that the failure of East Asia to push an alternative vision of financial governance reflects both the lack of regional political unity and, more crucially, the divisions of interests both between and within key East Asian economies. Despite nearly universal regional dissatisfaction with global standards and institutions in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, these two factors have combined to prevent the development of a distinctive regional model that could be promoted at the global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research puzzle of this article is to understand and explain the process of Iskandar-Malaysia region building. By doing that the article contributes to the debate around how regions emerge and to what extent states have to adapt to, cooperate with, and compete with them. Within the framework of regulatory regionalism and multi-level governance, the paper aims to address one main question: how and to what extent interactions between state and non-state actors that contribute to produce new (cross-border) regional forms may politically and economically reconfigure states' relations. This is the first study on Iskandar-Malaysia that focuses attention on the sub-national border governance that is shaped by the interaction between Singaporean, Malaysian and Johorian private and public actors and which can lead to an internal transformation of the states involved in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990s, China has adopted various multilateral policies to shape a more favorable regional environment. The policy of integration, which accommodates both the United States and neighboring countries’ core interests, can succeed in achieving China's goals in regional multilateral cooperation. On the contrary, the policies of dominance, co-governance, and guidance have been suffering from frustration or failure because they threaten the core interests of either the United States or China's regional partners. The efficiency of China's multilateral policies is strongly shaped by two factors: the dominant United States wary of China's rapid rise and the substantial power gaps between the two states. In the coming decade, China may rise to the second rank in terms of economic capabilities, but the United States can still maintain its dominant position. So China will adhere to the policy of integration to maintain its favorable regional environment in East Asia. China's rising position and its integration policy will result in the continuation of competition in the regional cooperation mechanisms and the stability of the US regional alliance system in the decade to come. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the late 1990s, China, Japan, and South Korea – the core states in Northeast Asia – have gradually engaged in various initiatives and institutions for regional cooperation. Such initiatives extend from summitry to functional cooperation in finance, environmental protection, logistics, and other areas. Furthermore, the three countries have shown their willingness to vitalize cross-border economic activities by concluding commercial arrangements. Given these evolutions, this article seeks to address the following questions: what features are found in trilateral cooperative initiatives and how these features are evaluated in terms of ‘regional governance’? The paper advances two propositions. First, regional cooperation in Northeast Asia can be characterized as weak neoliberal orientation and intensive business involvements in cooperative projects in state-directed policy networks. Second, regional governance in Northeast Asia has gradually intensified the nature of regulatory governance in which the governments of the three countries sought to harmonize standards and regulatory systems through trilateral cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we argue that since 1945 Japanese foreign policy has evolved through five phases, which will culminate in Japan's re-emergence as a global ordinary power. We then discuss three potential models of ordinary power that are ideal-typical in nature, but which share some qualities with the respective political circumstances of France, Germany, and Britain. We also consider the legitimacy and capacity deficits that Japan possesses, and the way in which recent electoral developments may contribute to the addressing of these deficits. We argue that Japan is using the British model as a foundation for the acquisition of ordinary power status. In doing so it is increasingly binding itself to the United States. But such a move can also provide a platform from which to develop the possibilities that lie beyond bilateralism (plus), in the realm of the German model, and wider regional cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the implications of domestic political changes in the post-1997 era for ASEAN's regional cooperation and institutionalization. The conceptual framework traces regional relations to the makeup and grand strategies of domestic coalitions (internationalizing, hybrid, backlash). Had some predictions in the immediate aftermath of the crisis been fulfilled, the advent of domestic backlash coalitions would have portended lower levels of regional cooperation. Alternatively, in the absence of changes in the fundamental nature of most ruling coalitions after the crisis, ASEAN's cooperative thrust was expected to be maintained. The article explores the extent to which ASEAN's activities in the post-crisis era supports either of these two propositions. It finds that a shock of major proportions in Southeast Asia led to some immediate challenges to bilateral relations. At the same time, the aftermath of the crisis led to considerable multilateral and bilateral cooperation on economic issues, expansion, intervention, and security. Furthermore, cooperation may have indeed improved despite subsequent crises, including 9/11 and its aftermath. Yet no linear progression or irrevocable process towards internationalization or regional cooperation can be assumed. Alternative coalitions, and their potential for changing regional trajectories, must be reckoned with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]